


Of Singing Stars

by JenCforCarolina



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Gjallarhorn, The Reef, destiny titan, vestian outpost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 19:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6127085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Reef is now filled with new interesting people, and Liean is ever curious.<br/>Exploring the POV of Reefborn Awoken</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Singing Stars

**Author's Note:**

> [Find it on tumblr](http://jencforcarolina.tumblr.com/post/125355046378/of-singing-stars)

Liean was used to the Vestian view. All purple smoke and dust. It was nothing extraordinary. What was interesting was the people. New people. Guardians to be precise.

She handled incoming comms for Petra. Worked the console below the pedestal where the woman greeted Guardians. The outsiders were all so interested in Petra, in Variks, in the Cryptarch, the robed man of Osiris. No one was interested in Liean.

That was no big deal though. It just meant she could observe without appearing to have interest in the Guardians, something that was generally frowned upon amongst her sisters. They were thought of as a nuisance at best and an invasion at worst by most of the Reef. But no one dared speak against the Queen’s decision, merely channeled their distaste into their attitudes.

So Liean watched. Snuck glances at the armored and the robed and the cape clad. Noticed the disturbing amount of males, how did Guardians get anything done with hot-heads so pervasive in their ranks?

She noticed the humans, so intriguing.Their first reactions of the outpost were always so varied, so obvious and vocal, from unabashed glee to distaste to poorly concealed awe. She saw the Exos, once thought to be just legend, their faces unreadable to her but evidently not to their teammates. Their various blinking lights meant something, she knew it.

She noticed the Awoken too. Could tell who was native and who was not. Saw the earthborn breathless at the sight of the place, sight of their kin. Yeah, Liean considered them kin, however distant. The humans too, in a way, a much, much more distant way. Uncultured kin, kin that did not understand, did not fit into the society of the Reef, yet still of distant relation. Like the tame dog to the wolf. Those born of earth, touched by the stars or not, had no place in the wild pack of the reefborn.

Today she noticed one earthborn awoken in particular. It was her first time, Liean could tell by the way she looked around uncertainty. She was so tiny, hardly more than a child. Hard to tell if her face was blue or lavender in this light. But her eyes glowed yellow, like Liean’s own.

She was one of those who wore capes, a Hunter. Had a huge sniper rifle over her back. She spun slowly to look out into space with a wide open mouth and wide open eyes. She brushed stray clumps of hair, fallen from her bun, out of the way to see. They kept falling and she brushed them again and again until finally her attention was torn from the view and back to herself. She tugged free the rest of her hair from the band and set to work attempting to get it under control.

That was when the curious thing happened. A heavily armored human woman, a good head taller than the little Awoken came up behind her and took matters into her own hands.

“Eyahn, sweetheart, let me help.” She soothed in a language Liean didn’t know but could understand. That’s how all these Guardian’s spoke, the words just made sense in your head, as long as you didn’t focus on the sounds too hard. She wondered what she sounded like to a Guardian.

The small girl called Eyahn let the taller do up her hair, standing silently and patiently. The Titan sang something as she worked, soft for only the two of them but Liean heard it too from her place at the console. Couldn’t catch the words over her sisters beside her gossiping but she caught the melody. She thought it simple but quite nice.

When the human finished she bent a little and planted a kiss on the top of the Awoken’s head and hugged her around the shoulders.

“How do you like it? Pretty, right?”

“I would like to stay awhile.” The little girl spoke up. Her voice was older than Liean had expected. She was older than she looked.

The human smiled a little with just her mouth, her eyes stayed sad. “Of course. I’ll busy myself as long as you’d like. Just tell me when you want to go. Take your time.” She unwrapped her embracing arms. “Need anything from the vaults?”

“Can you bring me Seph?”

The woman paused, stunned for a moment. She lowered her voice but her face was still angled properly for Liean to hear. “You don’t keep him with you?”

Eyahn pursed her lips and turned her head away.

“Of course I’ll get it.” She patted the little one’s shoulder and moved over to the vault access terminals. She returned with a rocket launcher and a message.

“The boys we raided the Vault of Glass with want to take on the Prison of Elders. They asked if I’d come watch their backs. Will you be alright here on your own for a while?”

“Yes.” Was all the little one replied. She took the rocket gingerly but firmly, cradling it in her arms. It looked heavy. Maybe it wasn’t.

“Alright. I won’t be too long. The guys… they might be a bit longer.” The chuckle from the human raised nothing from her little friend. She bent to kiss the top of the Hunter’s head again before striding off to a pair of Guardians hovering near Variks.

Eyahn didn’t move again, just stood and stared at space, clutching the rocket launcher.

She stayed that way until it was time for Liean’s break. With a curious glance at the statuesque girl, the reefborn tapped out and headed for her room.

When she returned a couple hours later it seemed as though the Guardian had left. But as she returned to her post and keyed in, she noticed a flash of unnatural color out of the corner of her eye. No, the small Guardian had not left, merely moved. She was sitting in a coil of cable with the rocket still in her arms, staring longingly at the purple dust clouds out beyond the Outpost through struts in the railing.

Liean glanced around. Her sisters were off-shift now, it was the “night watch” if anything could be called such a thing in perpetual darkness. No one was around, except perhaps Petra and her guard, but they were always busier with something else.

No one really paid much attention to Liean.

“Hello.” She said to the little earthborn girl. It sounded funny, not the gentle way she had wanted it to come out. But the recipient of the words did not seem to mind. She nodded without saying a word or breaking her distant gaze.

“Looking at the stars?” She asked, trying again to make conversation.

“They are much louder here.”

“Who?” Liean asked.

Those yellow eyes turned right to hers.

“The stars.” She said. “Can’t you hear them? Can’t you always hear them?”

Liean blinked under her gaze. “Not… particularly. They are pleasant to look at, if… that is what you mean.”

The Guardian lowered her gaze. “Perhaps you hear them so much you no longer realize.”

It seemed a wise assumption. “Perhaps.” She agreed, and tried to think of what the girl meant by ‘hear.’ She elaborated on her own.

“When you are down on Earth and it is day all you can hear is the sun. It is very loud and very strong. It can fill you with energy or it can exhaust you. But when it is night you can hear all the little stars out there, all the distant galaxies. They sing.” She still stared out at the purple void, transfixed. “Here they are even clearer and colder. They have never felt so close. He would have loved to hear them.” She clutched the rocket in her lap tighter.

“He? Your weapon?” Liean asked, not meaning to pry but curious, she wanted the girl to keep talking.

“He was not always a weapon.”

“What was he before?”

“A man.”

Her face must have betrayed her confusion because Eyahn continued. “It is made from his armor, what we were able to recover.”

“At the Gap.” Another voice entered. It was the human Titan from before, leaning on the rail above them. “The Gjallarhorn line was made from the armor of the fallen Guardians at the Battle of the Twilight Gap.”

“Are there… many?” Liean asked delicately, glancing between the two. The human tilted her head this way and that.

“There were many and there were few. Many because the losses were very great. Few because much armor was mangled beyond use, and because they were only given to the friends of those who survived. Many full fireteams were lost, and so there was no friend to survive them.” She spoke with a downcast detachment and undertones of pity. Eyahn was staring at her with a blank look, not of anger or sadness or any emotion beyond attentiveness.

“I would like to stay here a little longer.” Was all she said.

The human broke into a sad smile. “Of course. As long as you’d like. Just call me whenever you are ready to go. We have all the time in the world.“

They all knew there was a war on and that was not true, but no one said so aloud. The human pushed back from the railing and wandered off. The earthborn turned her gaze back to the stars, and Liean was left to monitor her comms station and sneak glances at the girl and what was once a man.


End file.
